An Encounter Ordained
by Morninglight
Summary: Sequel to 'A Discussion Had', part of the Klostrun (Sandstorm) series. Lia proves herself an adult and runs into a certain pair of twins.


Note: Thanks for reading and reviewing (except for the person who left the anon review on my last story I deleted. You managed to be racist, homophobic and misogynistic in 30 words or less – well done! *sarcasm*). Trigger warning for psychological trauma, fantastic racism and violence.

…

It was said by certain of the Ansei Shehai that dishonourable souls were banished to an afterlife of eternal cold and bleakness where no winds blew. Aside from the constant Atmoran Wind which howled over the ice floes, Lia was fairly certain she'd arrived at that place as she disembarked from her withy-and-leather coracle, hired from an Argonian on the docks of Windhelm, on the shores of Serpentstone Island. Her cheeks were ruddy with cold and the medium-weight woollen cloak good enough for Ysgramor's city was damned useless on the open ice. She was going to kill Galmar Stone-Fist with his damned ice wraith teeth shoved down that thick throat.

Uncertain of the habits of ice wraiths, she swallowed a bitter draught of vampire dust and chaurus eggs bought from the apothecary – an Altmer! – in Windhelm. Then she dropped into the Fennec Moves against the Wind scouting form and slowly climbed the trail made by dozens of Nords needing to prove themselves to Galmar Stone-Fist.

A high thin sound like ice crackling beneath a winter's wind was the first warning as an insubstantial creature of frost and teeth slipped past her. Judging by the icy chill in its wake, it had to be the ice wraith she was sent to hunt. Ralof had said they were the ghosts of the winter-dead Nords.

Lia rarely called fire in combat because she couldn't abide the smell of charred flesh but she wouldn't have that problem with the ice wraith. So she gathered some of her magicka in her hand and cast Firebolt at the wraith.

It dodged the spell adroitly and was suddenly upon her, icy fangs latching onto the flesh of her outstretched arm. Lia swore in pain and pulled her dagger from her sash to try and fight it off.

Her robes were red with more than dye by the time she was finished but the dying wraith coalesced into a puddle of mush, a handful of razor-sharp fangs glinting in the mess. She grabbed them and rose to her feet, burning the last of her magicka to seal the major wounds on her arms and legs, blue-silver scars lacing across olive-bronze flesh.

With energy drained, she began to shiver as she struggled down to the coracle, cursing the Stormcloaks, Alduin and every other motherless son of the winter-dead in Skyrim. Lia made it to the little watercraft but collapsed in it, blinking upwards at the cold blue sky.

_Talk about my luck,_ she thought wryly as the delicious warmth of overexposure stole across her body. _I kill the damned thing only to replace it…_

…

The crackle of fire and the stench of badly roasted meat brought Lia to consciousness, screaming for her Unca Kand. Dead silence descended upon the shoreline of Serpentstone Island as her apparent rescuers – a pair of dark-haired, quicksilver-eyed Nords who looked very much like each other – regarded her in shock. Lia gulped for breath, the icy air burning her lungs as she reminded herself that Cloud Ruler was twenty-five years past. But still she recalled the terror of being trapped in flame.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry," she babbled apologetically, trying to gather herself. "Bad memories, I…"

"It's okay," soothed the bigger of the two, a man-mountain that made Ulfric and Galmar look like striplings. "I screamed like that when I dreamt of giant spiders."

"You still do," muttered the lean, hard-eyed Nord tending the fire.

"Tilma told me that being scared means I have imagination," the big man replied sagely.

Lia inhaled another gulp of icy air before offering an explanation. "I… lost my family in the Great War. The Thalmor burned them alive with witch-fire. I react poorly to… unexpected flames and cooked meat."

"With the scars on your legs, I can well believe it," the lean Nord noted tersely albeit not without sympathy.

"Thank you for saving me from the winter-death," Lia answered with a slight bow.

"Don't thank us; thank Jarl Balgruuf's bounty on the Alik'r," he continued somewhat sardonically. "He was… unhappy about your friends kidnapping a citizen of Whiterun and wants an explanation."

Lia leaned forward, warming her hands over the fire pragmatically. She was at the mercy of these mercenary brothers – and at least they'd left her alive. "I tried to get an audience with him but the Steward Avenicci demanded a bribe that I couldn't pay. The woman you knew as Saadia was known in Hammerfell as Iman al-Suda and was wanted for treason against the city of Taneth during the Great War, when she betrayed it to the Thalmor."

The brothers exchanged looks. "Jarl Balgruuf wouldn't be happy to discover that," the big one noted. "But whether she was guilty or not, there's a bloodgeld – bounty – owed for a life. One thousand septims."

_I am going to skin Kematu and use his hide for a sword-belt,_ Lia thought flatly. "Does he accept payment in instalments?" she asked aloud. "It will take me a few months but I'm in Skyrim until the dragons are dealt with, so I'll find the coin."

"You would need to remain in and around Whiterun or have someone willing to stand bond for you," the skinnier mercenary answered tersely. "It was a neat trick you did, luring Saadia out of the Bannered Mare to the stables, but the horsemaster saw you and told the guards."

"Son of a…" Lia sighed and rubbed her temples. "I'll come in. Winds of the Gods, things have gone from bad to worse since I came to Skyrim."

"You'd be the Alik'r who survived Helgen then," the lean merc observed quietly. His grey eyes were sharp and smart, a rare thing in a Nord. "I thought you were a Redguard, not a Norc as I can see now."

"Mother was from Half-Moon Hold, Father an Imperial Ra Gada," Lia explained wearily.

"I remember Skjor mentioning a pair like that…" The lean merc shook his head. "Get some rest. We've a long journey to make tomorrow."

Lia was in no condition to argue and at least the mercs were being fairly decent. Regardless, she surreptitiously cast Lightning Cloak set to trigger if anyone touched her before falling into slumber.

…

Farkas put his beefy hand on Vilkas' arm as the ozone scent of magicka wreathed the Alik'r just before she went to sleep. "She's a woman alone an' obviously doesn't know we're Companions," he pointed out.

His surly brother sighed and nodded. With him refusing the beast-blood, he was in more of a foul mood than usual, every little thing irritating like sand in his loincloth. Kodlak really needed to figure out how to cure the werewolf curse before Vilkas did something they'd all regret.

It was a relief she'd agreed to come along quietly. Farkas knew a fighter when he saw one; the quality of muscle on the Norcish woman's athletic frame was superb, her long, graceful fingers callused from both blade and hammer (if the speckled burns on them was any indication), and she was obviously skilled if she managed to slay an ice wraith with Flames in one hand and a dagger in the other.

He found a leather thong and knotted it around a tooth as an amulet for her. She'd obviously come up here to prove herself an adult, maybe to the Stormcloaks if some of the troubling rumours from Windhelm were true. If the Redguards were to ally themselves with Ulfric, the war would be over very quickly.

"Balgruuf is going to have Avenicci's hide for not passing on an Alik'r to him," Vilkas mused as he regarded the charred remnants of a venison haunch sourly. He was a bad cook.

Farkas nodded in agreement. They'd smelled the truth on her and Avenicci was known for his skimming ways. Every Steward did it but the Imperial – like most of his kind – was obviously squeezing a little more from the Jarl's petitioners. "Sounds like she tried to do the right thing."

"Extraditing a citizen of Whiterun to face charges of treason in Hammerfell would have been… difficult," Vilkas noted. "I suspect that's why there's another Alik'r rotting in the cells; Commander Caius thought him a simple mugger."

"Commander Caius is an idiot," Farkas muttered. The man found ways to make the Companions' lives awkward because he didn't like the idea of 'an independent mercenary company' in Whiterun. The Imperial knew _nothing_ of the Companions' history, even when Kodlak had tried to gently educate him.

"Yes. But the fact remains this woman is an agent of a foreign power who kidnapped a citizen of Whiterun without justification." Vilkas always talked his way through complex stuff in a way that Farkas could understand. "The Alik'r are… a mixture of Stormcloaks and Blades, I suppose."

"Explains why she's interested in dragons." Farkas looked down at the Norcish Alik'r again. "What are we going to do with her?"

"Take her to the Jarl. Balgruuf's not unreasonable…" Vilkas regarded the woman dourly. "He'll be even less impressed when he finds out the Alik'r have been dealing with the Stormcloaks."

"Had to happen," Farkas observed. The Alik'r had kicked the Thalmor out of Hammerfell. Mutual enemies and all of that.

"I suspect the approach would have come from them. Ulfric is too xenophobic to deal with other races, even when the Stormcloaks would be stronger for it." Even Farkas knew _that_, as both Ria (a Bruma Colovian) and Athis (a Dunmer) had been… eloquent on the manner.

"She could join the Companions," Farkas suggested quietly. His instincts – both wolfish and human – were telling him she'd make a fine member of the heirs of Jorrvaskr. And Kodlak had said the Alik'r had their own sort of honour, you just needed to understand that they were like the sandstorms of their deserts – fierce and sometimes unpredictable.

Even Vilkas at his most grouchy wouldn't argue with Farkas if he decreed someone would make a good whelp. "It's a thought," he said. "But she will be dabbling in politics and possibly following the Dragonborn about-"

"So we recruit him too. Athis says that his cousin Suvaris said that it's Ralof of Riverwood, Gerdur the lumber mill's owner's brother," Farkas interrupted calmly.

Vilkas' jaw dropped. "You knew who the Dragonborn was and you didn't tell the Circle?"

Farkas blinked at his twin. "Athis told us, remember? Last week when he brought in that mammoth with Ria and Torvar."

His clever brother flinched. "I was… preoccupied."

_He's losing control of the blood,_ Farkas thought worriedly. It had been the Feast of the Wolf Moon when they'd feasted on that mammoth.

Simply nodding, he turned away from Vilkas to study the woman again. Kodlak over the past couple months had been telling Farkas to watch the Norcs of Half-Moon Hold and see if any of them wanted to join Jorrvaskr. He'd been emphatic about it, in fact, and that only happened when the Harbinger had a vision of things to come.

_We have to get the Dragonborn away from Ulfric,_ the burly Companion thought grimly as he tended the fire. He agreed with the Stormcloaks that no mer should tell people what to worship but it wasn't the Jarl of Windhelm's place to decree what was honourable and not. That duty belonged to the Companions of Jorrvaskr in general and the Harbinger in particular.

Besides, what kind of heroes would they be if they didn't go toe-to-claw (or fang-to-claw) with Alduin himself?

Farkas looked down at the sleeping Norcish Alik'r. He hoped she was the Norc the Harbinger was dreaming of because she looked like a pretty decent person and the Companions could use someone trained as a Blade. He just supposed it was a bonus she was pretty and seemed nice too.


End file.
